The Eye of the Falcon by Michelle Paver Read Free Book Online

Pirra’s face. She moaned, and he put down the basin and began passing his cool fingers lightly over her throat, then under her chin, as if he was searching for something.
    With a jolt of terror, Pirra realized what he was feeling for: the telltale boils of Plague.

8
    F rom a distance, Hylas scanned the farmhouse for signs of Plague. No white handprints, no stumpy little pus-eaters. Should he risk looking inside for food, or press on into the foothills?
    She’s in the mountains at Taka Zimi, Gorgo had said. But where ? Above him the peaks were covered in snow and riven by deep forested gorges. Pirra could be anywhere. If she was still alive. And if the Plague could kill High Priestess Yassassara, what hope was there for her daughter?
    But he had to keep trying. He had sent Pirra to Keftiu. It was his fault that she was shut up in Taka Zimi.
    For three days he had made his way across the haunted plain. Once it had been rich and populous, but the ash-gray settlements were deserted—except for half-seen ghosts, angrily seeking what was lost.
    He couldn’t always see them. At times, a bird or a fox would flee in terror from something unseen; but at others, he would get that ache in his temple, like a warning, and fear would clutch at his heart, and he would glimpse a shadow at the corner of his eye. Why him? Was it because he was here on Keftiu? Was it because of the Plague? All he knew was that it happened, and he hated it.
    And he dreaded the Plague. For three days he’d kept to the woods, making shelters out of branches and waking often and checking himself for the black swarm of sickness. To ward it off, he dusted his face with Gorgo’s fleabane and sulfur, and scoured his fingertips with a lump of pumice Periphas had given him. “Plague gets in through the whorls on your fingertips,” Periphas had said. “You’ll increase your chances if you rub them off.”
    Sometimes, Hylas had spotted other ragged wanderers, but when he’d tried to ask about Taka Zimi, they’d fled. Maybe they thought he was a ghost. It was hard to tell in this twilight, because ghosts have no shadow, and without the Sun, neither did anyone else.
    He kept stumbling upon tombs. Many had been hastily sealed, and foxes had broken in and scavenged the dead. To stop the ghosts from following him, he’d made wristbands with strips cut from his food pouch, and stained them red with ochre he’d dug from a hill.
    His food was getting low. In the few farmhouses that weren’t stricken, the fleeing peasants had left little behind. He’d survived on Periphas’ bag of barley meal, with milk from a lonely and very sooty goat, which had been so glad to be milked that he hadn’t had the heart to kill it. It had repaid him by uprooting its tether and sneaking off while he slept.
    It was achingly cold. By now it should be spring, with bees buzzing in the almond blossom; but the trees and vineyards stood silent and black. If the Sun didn’t return soon, nothing would grow and everyone would starve. Gorgo was right. The gods had abandoned Keftiu.
    The farmhouse door creaked dismally in the wind. Could he risk going inside?
    He was too hungry to care, and headed for the door.
    He was in luck. Whoever had lived here had forgotten two smoke-blackened pig’s legs, hanging from a crossbeam.
    As he reached to unhook them, a pigeon burst from the rafters with a clatter of wings, and he caught movement in the shadows. Whipping out his knife, he leaped sideways. A pitchfork skewered the wall where he’d stood a moment before.
    His attacker jabbed at him again, yelling in Keftian.
    Again Hylas dodged. “I don’t want to fight!” he shouted.
    Still yelling, the Keftian lunged. He was a ragged young man with a grimy, desperate face: clearly a wanderer like Hylas, also after that meat.
    â€œI don’t want to fight !” repeated Hylas, yanking his axe from his belt.
    Shouting and